Sergeant Feona Noble, as head of the Major Crimes Unit, had taken it upon herself to respond to the situation down at the docks, along with three of her officers after headquarters received some sort of tip about a drug shipment coming in. Usually, a major drug bust such as this, being perpetrated by the Fierros, one of the major crime families in Crescent City, and a general thorn in Feona's side, would have required much more man power to deal with, but due to the state of the city the police force was spread thin. As such, Feona and her men were all that were immediately available on such short notice.
It quickly was realized, however, that the four would not be enough as at least a dozen men aboard a tugboat in the process of docking opened fire upon the group. Thankfully, the thugs were a good enough distance away so that their aim wasn't entirely accurate, allowing for Feona and the officers to seek cover behind their vehicles. Glass from their windows shattered as bullets pierced them, raining shards down upon their heads. Feona ordered Officer Roderick Foley to call in for backup.
With the force spread thin, Feona didn't know how likely it would be before more officers could arrive on scene to provide reinforcements. As it were, they were outnumbered, outgunned, and she had no idea if more Fierro gunmen were on their way to circle around them. Although there wasn't much she could have done differently given the circumstances and the little information she had been given to act upon, Feona cursed herself nonetheless for getting, not only herself, but also her officers in this position. It wasn't like her to be reckless, but the many sleepless nights this unholy storm had caused her seemed to be taking their toll.
Several pops close to her alerted Feona to Officer Foley returning fire at the criminals, his head poked up above the hood of his squad car.
"Hold your fire," she shouted at him, leaning over to yank him down below the frame of the vehicle just in time as a bullet ricocheted off the hood near where his face had been.
"I don't care how good of a shot you think you are, Foley, all you're doing is wasting ammo from this distance."
Feona looked across at her officers, ascertaining how they were handling the situation. Foley, an officer who saw himself as a bit of a hotshot, was anxious, ready to take action and hating that he had to instead cower behind a vehicle. Then there was Grenner, a rookie nearly fresh out of the academy, assigned to Feona by her paper pushing lieutenant who insisted on giving her unqualified men, was clearly too frightened to move, as was evident by his shaking. Feona knew the poor kid had never been in a shootout before, let alone fired his gun at an actual live target. Thankfully, the third officer, Franklin, a sixteen year veteran, crouched silently and calmly behind his car, firearm in hand at the ready.
"Back up will be here soon. For now, sit tight." She said. Although Feona was looking back and forth between the three, she was speaking mainly to Grenner.
"We're in the bad position of them being at higher ground, and I'm not risking us returning fire when we can't even get a clear shot off at them. Stay sharp, watch out for any of these assholes trying to sneak up on us. And for Christ's sake, keep your goddamn heads down," Feona added, this time pointedly staring at Foley beside her.
"We have no idea what kind of firepower we're up against. For all we know they have a couple sharpshooters, and-"
Feona was interrupted as a large crash rang out, the solid thud sounding as if it came from the Fierro tugboat. The gunfire stopped briefly, and she risked a peek over the cover to see what had happened. Feona wasn't able to make out what had occurred on the boat, though she noted that it looked slightly lopsided now, tipped upwards and leaning towards the aft. With any luck, Feona hoped the idiots had run aground against the ice she imagined must be rapidly forming over the waters.
She also noticed a lone figure moving out across the open space between the cop cars where they were hunkered down behind, and the tugboat at the dock a couple hundred yards off. At first she figured it to be a Fierro attempting to outmaneuver the police, and she raised her gun ready to take aim, but she quickly saw that the hooded figure was ambling off towards the boat, instead, seemingly taking advantage of the lull in gunfire to avoid getting shot. She wanted to call out to the person; to shout for them to get to cover, and away from the gun battle, but she feared drawing the Fierro's attention to the stranger and getting whomever it was killed.
She cursed again, ducking behind her vehicle once more as the automatic gunfire began anew, although this time it was clear there were less shooters maintaining the hail of bullets.
"Foley, get back on the radio and see how long until the nearest unit arrives."
As Foley reached inside his squad car to grab the radio, a lucky shot rang out, fired just right through the broken window that it clipped Foley in the shoulder, just missing the protection of his vest. Before Feona could react, however, a large form swooped down from above them and scooped up Foley. The winged creature, just as quickly as it had arrived, lifted off into the air, carrying a screaming Foley. Feona was less than a second from firing at the thing, putting a bullet through what she assumed was it's torso, when the creature, again with amazing speed, landed and placed Foley lightly on the ground beside Franklin and his own squad car, then took off again. A rather useless maneuver, considering that distance of a few feet hardly required outside assistance to achieve, and the first squad car had been just as decent of cover as the second he now lay behind.
"What the hell...?" Franklin asked, his voice trailing off as he applied pressure to Foley's wound.
"Vigilantes." Feona spat out the word as if it were yet another curse.
"Damn fools are going to get themselves, or us, killed."
The crashing sound from earlier and apparent damage to the ship, the lone figure walking across the open distance to the boat, and now the bird-thing's unneeded, pointlessly dangerous 'rescue' all signified to the sergeant that she was dealing with vigilantes, once again. And not even well-trained ones, at that, as was evident. Whoever it was with the wings very nearly got themselves shot for nothing, because they weren't thinking about their actions. It was for this very reason she had warned against her nephew, Jackson, from acting without her supervision in his desire to clean up the crime in the city.
Now would actually be a good time to call in Jackson, she reasoned. Unlike whomever those idiots were, her nephew had been training for years for situations just like this, and worse. He knew how to conduct himself under these conditions without acting rashly or endangering lives. The thugs firing at them from on-board the boat she could handle, despite what seemed like a losing position for her and her men, but the appearance of, what she assumed were, hyperhuman vigilantes marked a good enough excuse for her to call in assistance from her nephew. And, given his somewhat official S.H.I.F.T. status, she could justify that decision to her superiors should she later be questioned.
Reaching for her cellphone in her pocket, Feona looked across to Franklin and Foley.
"What's his condition?" She called out to the veteran officer.
"He's going to be in some pain, but he'll live. Just a flesh wound is all," Franklin responded. Judging by the howling coming from Foley, he seemed to disagree with that assessment.
"Right. I'm calling in for backup, just sit tight." Feona selected a number from her speed-dial.
"If there were any units close by, they'd have been here by now, Sarge." Franklin reminded her. "They're not going to get here any faster just because you keep calling it in."
"Different sort of backup, Franklin." Feona told the man,
"this one should be close by."
***
Jackson had been preparing himself an early dinner when his newly purchased, prepaid cellphone rang. It had been Feona, his aunt, whom he had given the number to yesterday afternoon. Jackson had clearly heard the gunshots echoing in the distance from his aunt's end of the call, and he hadn't even waited for her to explain the situation before he was asking where she was. He was out the door and in the air as quickly as he could manage, flying all out to reach the docks. It had taken him less than two minutes to arrive at the scene, and now that he was there he took a brief second to survey the situation.
There were armed gunmen in a boat firing off automatic weapons at two squad cars and his aunt's unmarked police vehicle. He could also see some sort of skirmish on the deck of the tugboat the men were firing from, but he wasn't too concerned with that at that exact moment. Keeping himself at a safe enough distance above the criminals so that they couldn't see him, he began to focus. Solidifying air had always been the most difficult aspect of his ability to master, and the pressure he was feeling to keep his aunt safe from harm added to that difficulty, causing him to take slightly longer than usual to form a dense, large, and invisible wall of air a few dozen feet directly in front of the boat. It would serve the purpose of catching the bullets fired at the cops, preventing any further harm to come to them. He had even attempted to give the construct the same viscosity as a body of water, so as to cause the bullets to flatten and lose momentum upon impact as opposed to ricochet and potentially kill any of the criminals themselves. Despite the fact that they had been firing upon his aunt, and were, for all intents and purposes, the scum of the universe, he had been trained to preserve any and all life as best as possible when taking action.
Jackson floated down the few hundred feet towards his aunt, landing gently in front of her. One of the officers with her, a young man probably only a couple years older than Jackson, raised his weapon and aimed it the new arrival. Reflexively, Jackson went to disarm the officer with a strong gust of wind, but Feona was already shouting at the man, Grenner, who had apparently finally found his nerve.
"Hold! Lower your weapon, Grenner. This is our backup," she told her officers.
"I suppose I have you to thank for the gunfire suddenly ending?" Feona asked her nephew, noting the fact the spray of bullets had ceased.
"Yeah, are you okay?" Asked Jackson, more worried for his aunt's well being than explaining what exactly he had done to rectify the hail of bullets.
"I'm fine. One of my men got hit, but it looks like he's going to be okay, too." Feona said, now rising to her feet as she knew the danger of being struck by a bullet was over, for now. "Thanks for the save. But that isn't why I called you in."
Jackson looked at Feona skeptically, unsure if anything could be more pressing than the bullet storm that had had her helplessly pinned down. "Why did you, then?"
"Look, that tugboat is full of unknown, dangerous drugs, and manned by a crew of Fierro thugs. And now I've got at least two, possibly three, untrained vigilantes over there doing God knows what, and potentially destroying evidence, or endangering lives. Hell, they're endangering their own lives," Feona said, informing him of the situation. "I want you to get over there and do what you can to make sure they don't screw anything up, or get anyone killed. And they're hyperhumans, so as a sergeant of the Crescent City Police Department, I am officially requesting the aid of you, a fully trained S.H.I.F.T. agent."
Jackson could understand his aunt's desire to maintain control of the situation, and resolve things before any serious damage occurred. If any vigilante destroyed evidence of the drugs, then the MCU couldn't link it back to the Fierro higher-ups, or prove that the drugs weren't planted there by the vigilantes themselves. Then there was the added danger of the drugs potentially falling overboard and entering the city's water supply. Add to that the fact that any one of the vigilantes could end up dead, or kill one of the criminals, both of which scenarios would cause a firestorm of trouble for the CCPD, and you had a very precarious situation. However, referring to him as a fully trained S.H.I.F.T. agent when he had yet to completely graduate from his H.E.A.T. training was pushing the truth, although Jackson knew she had only done so for the benefit of the officers with her.
"I'm on it." He told Feona.
"If you can keep those bullets off of us, Officer Franklin and I will make for the boat right behind you." Feona was determined not to remain behind like some civilian while the foolish amateurs and her nephew did her job. "And, Jackson. Stay safe."
"Sure thing, Feona." Jackson told her, opting not to refer to her as his aunt in front of her men, figuring Feona wanted that kept on the down low. "Once you get close you'll come across a wall of sorts, you won't be able to see it, but keep moving towards your left until you get past. I'll make sure they don't have any guns to shoot you with for when you get that far."
With that, Jackson rose off the ground, wind swirling around him to provide lift, blasting the snow beneath him away as if with a snow blower, as he rocketed off towards the boat.
